This river is also called the Saladillo, and it deserves the name,
for the water is brackish. I stayed here the greater part of the
day, searching for fossil bones. Besides a perfect tooth of the
Toxodon, and many scattered bones, I found two immense skeletons
near each other, projecting in bold relief from the perpendicular
cliff of the Parana. They were, however, so completely decayed,
that I could only bring away small fragments of one of the great
molar teeth; but these are sufficient to show that the remains
belonged to a Mastodon, probably to the same species with that
which formerly must have inhabited the Cordillera in Upper Peru in
such great numbers. The men who took me in the canoe said they had
long known of these skeletons, and had often wondered how they had
got there: the necessity of a theory being felt, they came to the
conclusion that, like the bizcacha, the mastodon was formerly a
burrowing animal! In the evening we rode another stage, and crossed
the Monge, another brackish stream, bearing the dregs of the
washings of the Pampas.
OCTOBER 2, 1833.
We passed through Corunda, which, from the luxuriance of its
gardens, was one of the prettiest villages I saw.
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